I finally acquired my WD My Cloud NAS. The package was very simple and just had a power adapter, ethernet cable, and the drive. It came with some very simple instructions, and essentially said that I needed to install the proprietary software from WD.
Being one that loathes extra software running in the background and knowing that the My Cloud software is browser based, I found it odd to have to install a program if I was going to use Firefox to access/set up the device. Not convinced, I went to the My Cloud forums and learned some additional things. For starters, my PC does not have a gigabit ethernet port, which will limit my transfer speeds, nor does my router. I will have to upgrade both those components eventually. I also learned how to map the device on my network drive:
Being one that loathes extra software running in the background and knowing that the My Cloud software is browser based, I found it odd to have to install a program if I was going to use Firefox to access/set up the device. Not convinced, I went to the My Cloud forums and learned some additional things. For starters, my PC does not have a gigabit ethernet port, which will limit my transfer speeds, nor does my router. I will have to upgrade both those components eventually. I also learned how to map the device on my network drive:
After mapping the drive I found the following folders:
Knowing that my transfer speeds would be limited by my hardware I decided to find out what my speeds would be:
11.4 megabytes per second is not bad, but it's not great. In theory a gigabit router would hopefully improve speeds enough to max the drive's write speeds (I believe I max write speeds to be about 75 megabytes per second). Not a tenfold increase, but close.
After managing to map the NAS drive, I was unable to find how to launch the web interface and so I relented and installed the proprietary software. During the installation process the software prompted me to select the drive, revealing the IP address of the router, which meant I did not need to install the software since inputting that IP address into the browser takes me to the web interface. In the end I was successful in avoid the proprietary software! Small win.
After managing to map the NAS drive, I was unable to find how to launch the web interface and so I relented and installed the proprietary software. During the installation process the software prompted me to select the drive, revealing the IP address of the router, which meant I did not need to install the software since inputting that IP address into the browser takes me to the web interface. In the end I was successful in avoid the proprietary software! Small win.
The web interface is fairly clean, and seems simple to use. You can create additional folders, add users (the wife will be happy about that), and control cloud access. You can use it for back-ups as well, which should be great for those rare occasions when everything fails.
Hopefully next week I can successfully stream my music, videos, and pictures to my phone, iPad and TV. But first, I will have to add all the files to the drive, which could take a while.
I also began to do some research on gigabit routers, but I am just browsing at this point. Research can be found at: https://www.diigo.com/list/maestroochoa/list-2014102205023250
Hopefully next week I can successfully stream my music, videos, and pictures to my phone, iPad and TV. But first, I will have to add all the files to the drive, which could take a while.
I also began to do some research on gigabit routers, but I am just browsing at this point. Research can be found at: https://www.diigo.com/list/maestroochoa/list-2014102205023250